aching bones and wasted years
by CodependentCollision
Summary: You think, Beca - you think you'll always know her. You like her next to you, just sitting beside you, or dozing on the couch. You like that she likes you, now, but you liked her before anyway. You liked that she was oblivious, reckless, rude, and called it being honest. Thoughtlessly cruel, and she never even knew it, and who would have known you'd find that charming.


**A/N:** Wanted to try a different (but hopefully still realistic) characterization of Chloe. And it's my first time writing second person pov. Let me know what you think. Oh, and I promise I'm not ignoring your messages, my inbox is just really backed up at the moment. You guys are such sweethearts and I thank you endlessly for the support I've received in this fandom. Much love! Anyway, on with the fic.

* * *

There's this history in your head (like the dreams they tell you, where you are brave and strong, and live up to everything a person can have or do) - this history that has every person that Beca has ever loved breaking her heart. Because maybe, a little, you kind of want to save her. In this insubstantial, vague pop song sense of the word - and not. And not in that way at all, but something surer, and truer, and even more nonsensical. More real and not real.

This all makes perfect sense to you when you're drunk.

In this story in your head, Beca doesn't know her heart is breaking. She doesn't really cry that much - you're not one for weepy girls, you never were - but sits up late with arms wrapped tight around drawn up knees. She listens to the same ten break-up songs in a row, over and over again, until her mom throws each CD (six of them) out the bedroom window.

She finds them all in the morning, each time it happens, and places them gently back in their cases.

She drinks tea, which you've never seen her drink. She never, ever gets over it. Until she does.

* * *

Beca's never actually told you much of anything about any of them. You asked her once, in a round about way, and she smiled.

"You know how they say you can never go back again?"

"Yeah," you said.

"I had to learn that twice," she said. The smile wasn't very nice

* * *

It meant nothing, maybe, or everything, but you can tell there was more than one - because you just can. You bet there was a beat up skateboard, or a motorcycle. Late night climbing through windows and loud, slamming doors. You can just see it.

You saw one, you saw Eric (smeared shadow of teenage angst on a grown up body), and.

Well.

Okay, a sort of at the blurry edge of your eye, maybe outline of Eric. Because you were drunk, okay? You're drunk a lot.

You're not an alcoholic; you're in college.

* * *

You mean that.

* * *

You'd already had done shots before showing up to the party, the night you saw him, and she had been so beautiful that it still buzzed above the booze, and so you drank more. You drank more and had her sit next yo you with her plaid shirt and rough child's knees, and you thought about kissing her.

And then there was Eric, and she didn't cry much, and you liked her.

* * *

When you were hanging out with her and Jesse, you tried to ask, to maybe say something about Eric, and she said,

"Okay, it was like in that one movie Jesse made me watch, with the ridiculously tall building. He was-"

"Which one?"

"Jesse, it's not –"

"It is."

"No, no way, you're crazy, dude. I know what you're thinking and, I mean, it's not like he was stalking me."

"Uh huh. So how many movies are thematically centered around - "

"It's just. It reminded me. And. Hey, you know how sometimes you're watching this show, and you think, hey, I never thought-"

* * *

You're almost certain that you understood every word, and that scares you a little.

Understandably.

You think you get her, you like her, and it still surprises you.

She's not your type, she's not your kind, and you're not used to liking the difference. She worries about anything a person could ever possibly worry about and hides it under apathy, and she thinks too much, and she knows too much, and too little, and frankly, she tires you out. She makes your head hurt sometimes. When she talks sometimes you want to scream at her.

You kiss her instead, and mumble, "sorry," into her neck, and this is you changed for the better.

* * *

You know it's not too impressive.

* * *

You've never had a breakup (not honestly), because that means fraying, beforehand, at the edges. Generally you just start, and then stop.

You don't think about them later, and that's not on purpose. You say, "hi," in the hallway if you remember their faces. You mean to remember their faces.

It's like a light switch - on and off.

You think, Beca - you think you'll always know her. You like her next to you, just sitting beside you, or dozing on the couch.

You like that she likes you, now, but you liked her before anyway. You liked that she was oblivious, reckless, rude, and called it being honest.

Thoughtlessly cruel, and she never even knew it, and who would have known you'd find that charming.

* * *

In this history, this history that you have, Eric ended before the party, before the possibilities.

He ended in her head before they ended with his mouth, and so she had always been yours. She was new again.

In this story in your head, they all appreciate her, and love her, but they're young and so they're supposed to screw everything up. It's not a fairytale or something, it's life, and you can't imagine a person just standing there and doing it – purposely hurting her – because she's got these huge anime eyes and fun, messy hair that you always want to touch.

* * *

You can imagine her mom, just furious, stalking up to some pitiful fourteen year old boy and kicking him straight in the nuts. It's a great image – makes you laugh – and you chuckle about it into Beca's back while she's dozing.

You're still undecided about whether it's good, or bad, or completely weirdly guy like, that she nods right off after beyond fantastic sex.

* * *

In your sleep that night (when you met him, and not met him - when the story started) you dreamed about wide, hurtful bright yellow spaces. Wide, wider, and splitting window panes, and some things that might be metaphors about crashing into walls, and more failure, and never graduating, and disinheritance, and then suddenly you're in an endless forest, and when you find her, she's sitting high up in one of the trees.

Strong tug on the branch, and she falls down to your level, and that's not a metaphor.

More like the truth, and maybe you like your level just fine, and so everything's fine, and you're not a horrible person.

* * *

You'll be a good person.

You'll grow up.

You'll be responsible.

It'll happen someday – they're always saying so.

* * *

You thought about kissing her, and fucking her (spreading her smooth, skinny legs), and the smell of her bed, and the look of her hair at 4am, for three months before it happened - before you actually, consciously knew you were thinking about it - because you didn't want to be one of them.

In this other story in your head, you never did. It never happened.

You stopped calling, and she stopped calling, and one day you share your notes in class and she smiles at you. It's so tight and small that you want to protect her, and you take her out for coffee.

She has crumbly scone, and stuffs her face with it, laughing around the pieces. You tease her about her powered sugar fingers, and she smears stripes over your nose, and you're laughing too.

She starts to phone you whever she wants. It's always the most misopportune times.

One night it's while you're attempting to convince this guy you're Emma Stone and you realize half way through the conversation that he doesn't even know who that is, was, but you'll get laid anyway because. He thinks you're cutely pathetic and the dirt kind of poor.

It's endearing.

"You have to pick me up," Beca says, and she's silly-drunk and giggling.

You hate her for sixteen hours, and then she lets Fat Amy leave an obscene message on your grandfather's voice mail, and she's more horrified than you, and god, you think. That Mitchell is something else.

You call her Mitchell, that's it, that's everything, and she's always surprising you.

You call her for sleepovers, and forget, but she brings three flavors of popcorn, mixes you know she never shows anyone but you, and some kind of crunchy chocolate. You're generous, so you let her stay. She mumbles in her sleep, and chases you off the couch with her scratching, murderous toes.

You wake up with carpet face, and make eyes at pretty girls over her shoulder at breakfast. She tells them she's your sister, and can't they see the resemblance, and they can (of course), and then you tilt her backwards across the table and slobber at her neck.

You press your lips to her forehead, later, and mean it, and then promise to meet her at the pub later (after your bi-weekly, penciled in buddy fuck with Linda - no, Laura.)

* * *

In the best story in your head, you never love her.

And that means you care, and that means you'll hurt her, and you know, you knew - every second, every moment of all of it:

You know you can't stop.


End file.
